“Close her doors against a little sick baby, coming all the way from India in a nurse’s arms? The bare idea strikes one as horrible! Besides, the poor darling may arrive at any moment!� Mrs. Lovelace-Legge dried her pretty eyes with a fragment of gossamer cambric, and then—rat-tatter, tatter, TAT! went the hall-door knocker.
The three ladies started to their feet. Mrs. Lovelace-Legge rushed to the window.
“Can it be?�
“The baby—arrived?�...
“It has! I see the top of a cab piled with luggage!� cried Mrs. Lovelace-Legge, leaning eagerly from the nursery window. “I can make out the Harries Line label on the portmanteaux——�
The second-best friend joined her at the casement.
“One thing puzzles me,� she said, peering downward. “Would a child of that age travel with gun-cases and a bicycle?�
“They may belong to a passenger friend who promised to see the dear child delivered safely into my hands. Ah, here is Simmons!�
Simmons it was, with a salver and a card. He wore a peculiar, rather wild expression, and his countenance was flushed and somewhat swollen; perhaps with the effort of climbing so many stairs. All three ladies hurried to meet him.
“He—it—the——�